Combining Reversed Comma Above

It marks an initial h in Ancient Greek. Called rough breathing or dasia, it sits above a lowercase vowel, over the second letter of an initial diphthong, or to the left of a capital. The Greek letter rho can take it at a word's start too; Latin transliteration writes rough rho as rh.

Its counterpart is smooth breathing, or psili, which marks no initial h. A lone ◌̔ is a display sample waiting for a base letter. A polytonic Greek keyboard may ask for the breathing key before the vowel, even though raw text places this combining mark after its base.

How did the rough breathing develop?

The breathing marks grew from Greek reading practice. A later tradition credits the Greek grammarian Aristophanes of Byzantium with arranging the system, but that attribution rests on a late account with a doubtful history; gradual development is the safer explanation.

Ancient papyri—documents written on papyrus—show the marks used as reading aids by the 2nd century CE. British Library Papyrus 733 contains breathings, and a 3rd century CE Homer papyrus has one over initial omicron. The marks guided pronunciation.

By the 9th and 10th centuries, Byzantine editions marked accents regularly. The 1982 reform of Modern Greek spelling dropped breathings from standard monotonic writing; polytonic editions of Ancient and Koine Greek continued the older practice.

How do I type the rough breathing?

On a polytonic Greek keyboard, choose the dasia key before the vowel. In raw Unicode text, enter the Greek letter first, then this combining mark. If it floats alone or appears on a dotted circle, the base letter is missing.

With an acute or grave accent, enter base + breathing + accent. Greek typography places the marks side by side; a stacked result can point to a font or character-order problem.